Things You Don't Expect To Say While Driving

There are plenty of things I say fairly regularly while driving. I say things like "Oh, COME ON!" and "What the...?!?" and, especially - as many of the people who ride with me can attest - "Duuude!" (which is remarkably multi-use depending on inflection and intonation).

At the same time, there are a number of things I don't really expect to say while driving. For instance, I don't see myself using the phrase "Please don't drive, yet. I would prefer to sit here stopped now that the light is green."

I also don't expect that I'll be saying "Don't worry about your phone usage. Really. I'd rather you stay on that call than look at the road."

Today I got to say something I absolutely never expected to hear myself say. Especially not on my commute home from work. Let me give you some context:

I was about halfway home, driving around the west side of Lake Calhoun, just about to curve around the south side. Calhoun is a lake in the middle of Minneapolis. It's surrounded by houses and streets and people. But the lake is big, and there are often wildfowl around. The curve of the road goes between the lake (to the left) and a small pond off to the right of the road.

The past couple of weeks I've seen the ice come off the lake. I've seen ducks in the pond. I've even seen some herons (maybe cranes? I have no idea) go back and forth. Today, however, I looked to my right and saw something different in the air above the pond.

When I looked out the righthand side of the windshield, I saw something that looked like a snowball attached to a brown-ish kite. It was moving toward me fairly quickly, though, and as I kept watching it got bigger. It got bigger FAST.

Within a split second, the wings flapped and I saw a white flared tail behind it all. And the snowball became the head of a bird. A big, white-headed bird. At which point I whipped my head around to take another look and yelled to no one in particular (since I was alone in my car with the windows rolled up) something I really never thought I'd yell in my car in the city: "That's a frickin' Bald Eagle!"

I slowed down (there was nowhere to stop) and watched the eagle cruise across the walking paths and along the water's edge toward the east. I'm amazed that more people didn't stop to watch it go by. As I turned away from the lake, the eagle disappeared from sight.

A frickin' Bald Eagle! Duuude!